


The King Is Dead, Long Live the King

by Lavanya_Six



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 20:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18858952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavanya_Six/pseuds/Lavanya_Six
Summary: "Princess Azula, do you believe in angels?"





	The King Is Dead, Long Live the King

From his private office underneath Lake Laogai, the Grand Secretariat again cursed the existence of cherries, cherry pits, and the incompetent concubines who didn't know how to properly extract the latter from the former. Twenty years of carefully grooming Kuei from oblivious child king to oblivious man-child king lost because of _a choking hazard._

Long Feng would have to start all over again, properly conditioning a new Earth King to ensure the Dai Li's - and thus his own - iron grip on the sprawling city of Ba Sing Se. Since Kuei was unmarried and had fathered no sons on any of his concubines, protocol demanded they crown his closest living male blood relation. Somone who wasn't very closely related at all given Long Feng's careful pruning of the royal family tree. Again, anger welled up within the Grand Secretariat. All that wetwork to secure Kuei's station from potential rivals had been wasted. Worse, it meant someone on the throne who knew about Prince-General Iroh's current siege.

The Army barely respected his Dai Li's authority as it was. If the Earth King was willing to lend his ear to the army, control of Ba Sing Se could fall to the military. The nobility would never stand for that, meaning there'd be infighting that would weaken the city's defense during a critical period. Worse, the Earth King might start getting bright ideas and dictate military strategy, weakening the city's defenses ahead of the next Fire Nation attack. Morale had already been gutted by the Earth King's untimely death. It wouldn't take much more for a general collapse.

So very much was at stake. Everything from this point onward depended on the new Earth King, a complete enigma who had spent his whole life slumming in the Middle Ring. There was almost no information on the man, a relatively impoverished noble related to Kuei through their grandfather, other than that he ran a successful carpet cleaning business. Parents deceased. No siblings. No children. No wife. No girlfriend. No lover, past or present. Just owned a small dog.

Long Feng read through the thin file for the umpteenth time, hoping to gleam some additional insight from the paucity of clues on the man about to be crowned as his nation's (nominal) leader. Again, Long Feng's eye kept catching on the only odd fact about an otherwise exceptionally unexceptional man.

"What the hell kind of name is 'Vetinari'?"

 

*

 

"Princess Azula, do you believe in angels?"

She had, of course, never considered such an insipid idea. That angels did not exist was a transparent truth on par with Ty Lee liking to dress in pink. One simply had to have a clear eye for the world around themselves to see such things, and Azula had dragon's eyes, predator's eyes.

The man before her, however, was one of those rare examples that just might have her believing in angels. On the surface he was dressed as a merchant of modest means: simple black clothes, a neatly maintained black goatee, his only jewelry a simple seal ring (also, of course, black). He wielded his chopsticks with a vivisection's practiced eye, dissecting his dinner plate. Here was a man without wasted motion, or even the care to waste money on himself. Self-assured, certainly, but the world had no shortage of such men.

It did have a shortage of Earth Kings, though.

King Vetinari - such an odd name, that - paid her no special attention as they dined alone, with only his little yappy dog, currently sitting patiently at attention for table scraps, as protection.

Unostentatious. Spare. Modest. Not at all what Azula would have ever suspected in any specimen of royalty, let alone an office so infamously pompous as the Earth King. But then Vetinari was a mystery, one who had spent the last five years since predecessor's unexpected death idly tinkering with his own city while the world burned beyond its walls.

Here was a nobody who became a somebody, but didn't play the part the way Azula expected. He seemed to have no great ambition beyond trumpeting tawdry little projects like 'subterranean semaphores' and same-day postal delivery. The paradox boggled the mind.

"Angels?" she repeated. "No, but I have an open mind."

"That's a good skill to profess to have, Lady Azula. It invite people to share themselves with you. As we both know, people love to talk about the thing that matters most to them in the world."

Azula smiled. She picked up a wine glass from the long table between them. "That's an awfully cynical way of looking at the world, Your Majesty."

She sipped, and nearly spat out her first mouthful.

Lychee _juice?_

"You're underage," the Earth King said, answering her unspoken question. "I also want you perfectly sober for this conversation, and besides the press would throw a self-righteous fit at 'juvenile delinquency' in the palace.

"I'm your greatest enemy," she pointed out. "Why should they care what I drink?"

He faintly smirked, as if indulging her that self-appointed if obvious title. "Angels, Lady Azula, possess two interesting aspects. The first is that sometimes an angel will take a man back in time to where everything went wrong in his life, and give him the opportunity to set right what went wrong."

"Is this the part where I ask about the second?"

"That is that angels only come _once_."

So. That was the game.

Azula mimed checking her nails. "If you're going to try and convince me what a horrible person I am, there's no need. I'm a monster, obviously. Why run from that?"

That smirk again. "Of course."

"So are you a timebender or something?"

"No, Lady Azula, today I'm an angel, and I'd like to make a job proposition to you. I would very much like you to consider becoming my Grand Secretariat."

"You... what?"

He steepled his long, slim fingers. "I believe it would be a good learning experience for you, ahead of your assumption of the Fire Nation's throne, to have some practical experience in day-to-day governance. I also have been wanting to reform our secret police, the Dai Li, who've been rudderless since the unfortunate passing of their previous head after I had him assassinated. They traditionally report to the Grand Secretariat, you see."

Azula checked her wine glass again, just to be sure it had really been juice.

"You are, of course, entirely within your rights to refuse this employment opportunity, and to show the sincerity of my offer let me point to that door behind you." He did so, not that Azula turned her head. She wasn't like his little dog, to be commanded at a whim. "If at any point in this job interview you feel you wish to leave, you have only to step throught it and you will never hear from me again."

"And then what? A legion of guards cuts me down? Or maybe there's no floor behind the door and you'll have me fall into a bottomless pit."

Now he really did smile. "Hardly bottomless."

"So either I commit suicide, or I take over your government for you. Are you insane or do you think I'm stupid?"

"You may be taking over the government, even in the name of your father if you prefer, but I think you'll find that Ba Sing Se's government, thanks to my reforms, is entirely capable of running itself in spite of having an insane, power-hungry leader at the helm."

For half a second, a curious idea permeated Azula's mind. It almost sounded as if Vetinari was using her to perform a stress-test on his government. She dismissed the thought almost as soon as it occurred to her. Such a notion went beyond diabolicalness and entered into the realm of farcical. No, this was clearly some sort of elaborate mind game. Azula's only choice was to play along until she would inevitably be able to turn this plot against Vetinari.

"Your offer is barely worthy for someone of my stature," she said. "I insist that Mai and Ty Lee be my deputies."

"How fortuitous," Vetinari said. "Recruitment was the first assignment I had in mind. The Dai Li only have one member left, you see. She's a Joo Dee who rather liked being ordered around by men in uniform to cater to their every whim. It wasn't even something the brainwashing instilled in her, like with the other, now-retired Joo Dees. But to each their own, as the nebulous 'they' say."

"You- you can brainwash people? Really?"

"Not anymore. Dong Min, the good doctor who designed the process, rather unfortunately did not believe in angels..."


End file.
